Fabulous Friday Feature 9: Obsessions by =AzizrianDaoXrak on deviantART

Fabulous Friday Feature 9: Obsessions

Journal Entry: Thu Nov 29, 2012, 8:25 PM

Greetings, all, and welcome to my ninth

FABULOUS FRIDAY FEATURE

This week, I'm doing something a bit different. I've done so many wonderful themed features lately, I decided I'd have a bit of a sit-down this week and reflect a bit. So this week, I am going to feature three pieces each by artists I've been obsessed with lately around the site. But there are a LOT of deviants, so bear with me! There are plenty of different styles and media, so there should be something here for everyone. Next week, expect some winter madness! If you've got someone you think should be featured in next Friday's Feature, send me a note with a link to their gallery and I'll take a peek

I'd also love to hear about other features, particularly themed ones. I'll list those in the bottom section to help spread the word! The same goes for contests or news articles!

Please favorite this journal and pass it on! And if you liked this feature, be sure to check out the one from last week: [link]

I am ALWAYS seeking donations and nominations for my pay-it-forward project! Last week I was able to donate a three-month membership to the wonderful =HillsOfMyst, who does a fab weekly lit feature (included in the features section!), and I'm only a few hundred points away from being able to give away another one! I want to be able to donate premium memberships to deserving members, so please check out my journal for info on sending nominations:

Pay-It-Forward ProjectDeviants so far who have received premium memberships as part of this project:
:iconkinachuku::iconhillsofmyst::iconcelestialmemories::iconai-sanura::iconsurrealcachinnation:
Thank you sososososo much to $namenotrequired for helping me to promote this project!
Greetings! I am posting this to let you all know I have decided I want to try to pay the premium membership love forward, and so I am looking for donations to go toward buying premium memberships for other people

You can find the donation box on my front page. PLEASE DONATE! I'll need lots of help - all contributions are appreciated, no matter how small

That's part one, here's part two:
I'm seeking nominations for extra-special deviants, especially those who are really involved in the community, who don't already have a premium membership. If you'd like to nominate someone (I will accept self-nominations, though I look extra-carefully at those), send me a note with the following information:
~The nominee's

Finally (and then I promise I'll actually get to the features

), I'd like to recommend some light music to accompany this week's feature. If I may suggest:
Take Us Back by Adela Daine
Chimbote by Natalie Royal
Varúð by Sigur Rós
Magpie to the Morning by Neko Case

And now, without any further ado: THE FEATURES!

Visual Art

*herooftheheadset
is a really wonderful young photographer from Belgium who I have been watching for a while. Her pieces are a beautiful combination of directness and wimsy that soothes the soul.

~kinachuku
is a Dutch artist I only discovered recently, but whose fun, colorful artwork and unique style caught my eye.

*Finnguala
is probably one of my favorite artists of all time. Another Dutch artist, she's someone I've been following for a while, and is my usual go-to artist for new artwork for my apartment. She shares my love of old sagas, and her style captures them perfectly.

^SylwiaTelari
hardly needs an introduction. I feel a bit silly that I only discovered this AMAZING Polish artist recently (especially since I had fallen in love with one of her pieces ages ago and NOT LOOKED AT HER GALLERY MORE), but I'm addicted now! Her work is exquisite and earthy and fantastical, I love it.

~BialaTynktura
is a Polish metalworker and a newcomer to dA. Her jewelery is delicate and bold at the same time. I look forward to many more gorgeous pieces from her.

~AlvisHamilton
is a talented Russian photographer (seriously, what is it with me and all these European artists?

) whose work always makes me feel breathless with frost - it's always cool and makes me want to put on a cozy sweater.

~ElvireClev
is quite an amazing French artist who uses a Mexican artistic method. Her stylized representations of nature are vibrant and gorgeous.

~whiteflyinglizard
is quite the artist, and a new obsession of mine. His paintings are...breathtaking, and just the right amount of strange

~qetza
makes such colorful, but also deeply symbolic creations, and I am astonished he has not gotten more attention.

Literature

~cogongrass
is a poet I MUST include in any list of my favorite writers. This fellow-Carolinian is honestly one of my favorite poets ever. I do not know what else to say.

Lay Bridge 1. TOWARD YOUR NARRATIVE FOR A WAY BACK.

On occasion the road is wolves
and it's make a move at all
for a body in tatters Let's
say there is a way to
retrace steps and
undo a braid For me
it would be under a bridge of some
popularity rife with folklore all that and
maybe I'd take up company with
its pack of wild orphan snake eaters and
its hundred rumored ghosts and
there we all would have
made a barrel fire and
cooked our supper in it and
in it later we'd watch our
authors burn See
you have to hold tight to
a thought a rumor that
in some small wa

Of the EarthAinno martyr here. Ainnothin.
I go, I cn say that: I go.

Pillara salta the earth, sall I am.
Couldbe Im atleast that.

I do nothin but turn around.
Sall I got. Sthe only two ways I go:

lookin back, and upn a screech. An like any
other man, I use a voice

to give up what Im recknonins
my voicelessness.

Aingot my own.
Got mamas. Got daddys. Got their lives

that were theirs fore they had lives.—
I ramble on like this til the day gives in:

sun sets on me an don stop, anall I got
to show frits turnin around, salt,

hollerin, echoa my hollerin down the mounn,
back up through the mounn an back downit

till the mounn goes purple
w

Preparing to Leave for My Father          I. QUARK

I am          told         there are         these         traces in which         I hold   my         enormity.
Taken in parts, I        must seem    busy   as a

`zebrazebrazebra
is a writer who deserves mention for her amazing writing as well as her dedication to the dA lit community. Her writing to me is like the earth itself, and it unfolds, and challenges me to be better.

cloudburstinggirl, go slowly in the yellow evening:
old man thunder's got a grumble on
downtown and the hot drops of rain
are ready falling with a whip-smack,
a whistle horn of storms singing low.
old man trouble's gonna blunder on
despite your twirling skirts; despite
your pretty hands the flowing spits
of wind will wander on, that steady
summer song will blurt a sharp note
and bring the showers down again.
but you, I hear you hear the growl
and match it, sing the crackle-hum
and dance the water down as well
as any purple sky, and maybe you
could catch it sleeping. get it loud
and stalk the streets, girl, shake it
out of hiding; let your totems drop
wh

metamorphosisHe's caught the green bug
and the shape of him stumbles,
wound up and resounding like a spring;
a tumbling flower, or a man in heat deseated
who's caught the green bug like rain on the tongue.
Now he's coiled tit to thigh, skin twitching like a gadfly
and shaping a rare round amen to the sob of it,
the sheer glorious throb of it: the dirty thumb
pressing on the seeds in spring, the storms
and showers working hour to hour
at the nonsense of being

while down in the garden
his body becomes a boyish stamen
and aiming between the eyes of the sky
he splits himself, spitting aphids and sucking
at the ground, the euclidian sway of his petals
houn

dear teen meDear Sarah,
            Remember that time you tried to top yourself by hiding under the covers? That was hilarious. I remember you tugging at the edges of the blanket and praying, without a shred of scientific evidence, that the lack of oxygen would be enough to kill you. You sat under there for something like fifteen minutes before you gave up and went to make a sandwich. But while you were under there, choking a little on your pillow because you never washed your sheets, I remember you thought someone was watching. Someone who understood your suffering. Someone who understood you.
            Kid, that was me. And I've got two words for you: man up. Life can get a whole lot harder than this. Before too much longer, it's going to. And by the time you get to my age, you're going to be glad.
            Why were you

=HillsOfMyst
is a fairly recent dA friend of mine. This Canadian poet has plenty to offer to the lit community besides her weekly lit feature. Her style is gentle, but will break your heart.

stumbling across the grand canyon as we embracethis poem is a virus,
so be careful not to let it
touch you

      like the soft fingertips
      of a wide-eyed girl on
      your lips, silent as if
      to say, shhh, do you hear
      this great thing between us,
      this aching nothingness
      in which my heart lingers
      and stutters?

      and oh, how it stutters.
      us - us-us-  he - and i. me and
      him. we. us.

      she is like a singer when
      she laughs, speaks in recitatives
      like she has an audience (you),

      quivers in her bones
      when you touch her.

      (there is just this girl and
       her hand on your face and her

ice                                                                                     her veins are
                                                            filled to the brim with ice water,
               &
Ps. Sorry, m'dear, I know you don't think "we wrote a story" is very good, but I think it's lovely.

=Sammur-amat
is SUCH a sweetheart, and her style shows it! Her poetry is whimsical and full of vibrant color.

regardless of where and which roads (write)i. so today we get together
   as per your request
   today you (at last) confess to me

   i watch you narrate

   the e.e. cummings you've
   kept chained in your rhythm,
   in your beats and paces and all other nooks
   and crooks
   and hidden places

   i've secretly always known existed

   i want you to start writing today

ii. you tell me you believe
    in your ability
    to write the words i always knew you whispered;
    steaming at the hearts of other girls
    turning them to froth
    while i watch my own heart
    shrivel like dregs
    in the same cup of cappuccino

    i've always been drinking off drought

iii. i am sc

Caving Rib CageWe crossed at glacier paths on icicle footing;
in the hollow and darkness of a cavern where we found each other a second time, you spoke to me.

You told me tales of bereavement, and that the most morbid of all is not slow demise but rather,
it is being killed, just a little bit.

I never thought it a possible plausible thing-
to kill a man, just a little bit.
The calcium in my bones precipitate at the thought as you beckon me from my limestone shelter.

How does one kill another just a little bit?

   Give me deionized water and make me a paste;
   clean all my tarnishes,

YellowBleakness strikes and my heart is too diseased
Yellow from lack of sun, I'm a sick leaf

I need my fancy to be tickled, teased
Bleakness strikes and my heart is too diseased

Why do you carry a face so displeased?
Give me a minute to deal with my grief

Bleakness strikes and my heart is too diseased
Yellow from lack of sun, I'm a sick leaf

*Vigilo
has been a dA friend of mine for AGES. She's an Indian poet currently spending time in Shanghai, and her writing is MAGNIFICENT. It is at once something foreign and familiar, grounded and fantastical.

XXVmy hands will immerse: settle into a new sea, dig
in to find roots that swing far and wide
and up as a banyan tree.

RiverdrumMany things have been handed to me over years:
a drum full of water, once. I threw it away,
of course, but it returned, again, again,
until I took it under my arms
and called it mine.

My riverdrum is full of water that is full of light,
but it cannot scoop up a brook of stars.

I have two children. They have made
a game of watching the cows below that
walk towards me and never reach me. The first
one to spot the cow closest to me calls out 'Cowherd!'

I have a wife. I lose her like one loses grey hairs –
achingly, and with sadness. Perhaps these hairs
float over the river of oil and water that keeps us
away. Perhaps she l

Me Men o' th' Land and SeaMe man o' th' land
is a fair and true lad,
but I love better me man o' the sea.

Me man o' th' land
has hair o' gauld like th' sun,
but me man o' th' sea loved me lang.

Me man o' th' land
has een o' bauld blue,
but me man o' th' sea has een o' bonnie, bonnie green.

But oh, but oh, me man o' th' land,
if yer heart brak', lit it nae be for me,
lit it nae be for th' weary wurld.

But oh, but oh, me man o' th' land,
I love ye sae, but I love me man o' th' sea mair,
for auld lang syne, I will min' ye,

me man o' th' land, but oh,
but oh, there my true love bides,
an' I love better me man o' th' sea.

Dae tell, my bairn, dae tell ye

*glossolalias
has such a gorgeous poetic style. It says things like something you're remembering after a long, long time.

naked kneesin high school,
you tore your acl playing
a sport you didn't care for,
and you hate that scar: pale
thick and protruding, saying,
"look here. ignore the golden
hair that collects at his thighs,
ignore the bruises from kneeling
on the floor. ignore his calves,
the sharp angle of them and look
at me. look at his knees, how
ugly they are. the thick skin
callused pale and littered with
black hairs."

at work,
you don't have to stand but
in lines you get uncomfortable
and you never wear shorts which
is okay. i don't wear them either
[for more irrational reasons] and
i think your legs are my favorite
part of you, contending wi

little funeralswere there any regrets,
i have folded them neatly
and packed them with my summer clothes:
tucked in the attic, sitting beside your books.

they are mothballs for my memories,
keeping alive long nights and thick mornings,
but would it be right to forget?
and would i be myself, to forget?

i have set them where they can't shake my fingers,
thin and seeking,
but they remind me history should not be repeated
and tongues are best kept still.

~angeljunkie
is another good friend of mine from the lit community. He's currently working on a graduate degree in the UK, and is therefore always looking for more helpful feedback on his pieces! His prose makes me think of Neil Gaiman, and his poetry...his poetry is a hazy London evening, like the kind T.S. Elliot loved.

The Unremarkable Confessions of a Drunken LoverGive me another -
one part Jack, six parts truth.
Make mine a double,
'cause I'm still standing.
I measure my day in moments of you.
Clutching talismans of unacknowledged import.
My skin nags its ache for you -
nothing quite so sordid, I promise -
just your hand in mine.
Your Self occupying that
so conspicuously empty space
next to mine.
Oh, it's such a cliche...
I cast us as Romantic period lovers
forbidden ever to touch -
Romeo and Romeo,
sans suicide.
I'll use words to immortalise you-me-us
so Someday When
university students can pour over my lines
with apathetic glances
and giggle-whisper over hidden references
I never meant to put.
How many adjectives will it take to contain you
in rhyme and meter?
Vespertilian.
Ethereal.
Magnetic.
Addictive.
(My personal favourite.)
I'll pen epics in your honour.
Become that quintessential knight
questing for his lady's -
sorry. lord's
affection.
Will I ever win his han

will.i.
i will not grant you pretty words
though they burn in my veins
and force me to breathe,
as if my fey-child scripture
ever could withstand you
and the scars you carved in my DNA.

they breed in my throat,
a transcendental code sacrosanct
as the prayers you whisper,
and the vows you took in obligation
then broke,
only to hide your transgression
(twenty-six years, three months, twenty days)
and write in me the fear
of being erased.

so maybe you can't understand
how i made myself not hate you
when i thought you would die
just in case
maybe
one day
i might
feel regret.

ii.
i want to throw my fury
at your feeble body and
slurring tongue
like

=SilverInkblot
possesses the ability to be creepy, and heartbreaking, and wistful all at the same time.

Will-o'-the-wispShe wears a necklace made
of bones,
ossified phalanges gripping
her throat
like a rasping phantom.

Her heart is hard
and heavy,
full of dust and debts
unpaid.
Her corset is laced
too tight;
her ribs are being crushed
by lace
and internal pressures crawling
up her throat,
where the necklace chokes them all
back down.

They never found her
lover's head,
guillotined under train wheels when
he tripped
over rails hidden from the pool
of light
cast by the cast-iron lantern.
The railroad
men said it was a tragedy.
She said
he was pushed.
They carried
her by the arm, back to her porch swing
and left.

The hushed glow of distant
lanterns
beckons;

Strawberries.Not strawberries. Definitely not strawberries.

He reads a lot and all the girls in his books have strawberry-scented hair and often strawberry-colored hair, but not this girl, the one in his arms. She has dark hair, black under insufficient lighting conditions, and it certainly does not smell of strawberries.

He hates strawberries anyway.

Absolute HorizonMolly Steinberg can bend light. I would know. I'm dating her.

I know what you're thinking. You think I'm calling her dense. Thick-headed. Stupid. She's not. Oh no, she is not.

She's smart; very smart, but in the worst way possible. She's pretty, athletic, popular, top of the line family, manipulative bitch extraordinaire. Molly Steinberg gets what she wants. And Molly Steinberg wants an A in science class.

It's easy to look at fools in love and think you'll never be like that. I know I thought that way once. But when the (ahem) perky cheerleader sidles up to you for a little help with Physics homework, well, you just don't say no. Not unle

Community News, Features, and Fun(ny) Things
It just dawned on me how many of these are associated with the lit community...I'll try to do better in future!

Vintage Christmas Short Story Contest

Officially, this contest is now closed, but I've given the green light to a late entry or two. If you still want to enter and need another day or so to finish up, please let me know if you haven't already. For the rest of you, closed! Judging is already in progress, and I hope to announce the results on Christmas Eve.

Entry Gallery
Come on, people! The deadline is TOMORROW and I only have two entries. Let's get the rest in! Please be aware that if they're a bit past the deadline, it won't matter. Just get them done as soon as you can. We don't want this contest to be a flop, now do we?
Halloween is over, and for many of us, that can only mean one thing: time to get excited about Christmas! Let us begin with a few definitions from good old dictionary.com.
vin·tage
[...]
9. representing the high quality of a past time: vintage car

Holiday Card Project 2012
It's back! With the goal of bringing a little cheer to patients in the hospital during the holiday season, the deviantART Holiday Card Project connects deviants from around the world and applies their tremendous artistic abilities in designing and creating uplifting holiday cards.
In past years, the Project has received more than 5,000 cards sent in by more than 1,000 deviants from 50 different countries/political regions. Cards were then divvied up and distributed in-person by deviantART members to local Los Angeles, CA hospitals, with additional cards given to various hospitals in the U.S. and abroad for hospital staff members to hand out to patients.
The idea behind the Holiday Card Project is simple: do something nice for others. However, if you're looking for even more incentive, every deviant who submits a card will be given a free one-month Premium Membership to deviantA

Love dA Lit: Issue 104Welcome to the one-hundred fourth issue of Love dA Lit!

Every Sunday this article will aim to promote volunteer opportunities, various resources, prompts, challenges, and workshops, as well as highlighting various contests, and spotlighting a specific group every week. This is by no means a complete list of all the literature going-ons, merely a tool to help you get involved and stay informed.

This weeks group spotlight is #APictureToA1000Words!

#LITplease's Community Portal

Navigation
Literature Links | Group Spotlight | Workshops, Prompts and Challenges
Literature Contests | Resources

Fantastic Feature Tuesday #21This is a weekly feature of amazing literature that I come by during my
travels across deviantART. This is only a small sample of a vast amount
of wonderful pieces of literature written by absolutely fantastic
writers. Each deviation was carefully selected from a writer's gallery
based on structure, impact and word usage. I will never feature the
same person twice, so check out these wonderful writers now while you can!
Please this news article so it will reach a larger audience!

Happy reading!

Two Poems: A Contest (DEADLINE EXTENDED)NaNoWriMo is on its final wind-down, and many of you are hopefully very ready to terminate your one-month lease of a headspace where editing was unwelcome. Even more of you are, like us, feeling near-fatally neglected by the muses who have been showering their grace on prosehounds and keeping their distance from verse (or so they would have had you believe). On the heels of the no-editing, no-poetry silence let's recapture our words mid-arabesque--and then hilariously beat them down to nice respectable pliés while that one leg's still stretched backward. #confessional-poetry and a mangled cast of extras present:
Two Poems: A Contest of Poetry and Editing
Essential Info
- Poetry contest, obviously.
- Submissions open December 1, 2012, and close February 28, 2013. (NO MORE EXCUSES. YOU HAVE PLENTY OF TIME NOW.)
- Open to all members of the site.
- ORIGINAL WORKS ONLY. Nothing that wasn't written specifically for this. This i

Community Portal: November 25thNews
Love dA Lit: Issue 104

If you'd like to have something added/mentioned in this journal or the article please send me a note!

`IrrevocableFate
About Love dA Lit
Love dA Lit aims to promote volunteer opportunities, various resources, prompts, challenges, and workshops, as well as highlighting various contests, and spotlighting a specific group every week. This is by no means a complete list of all the literature going-ons, merely a tool to help you get involved and stay informed.
Love dA Lit is published every Sunday, by `IrrevocableFate via news article, and the Community portal will be updated in accompaniment with it!
Literature Links!
The Reason I Do Art
"Are you a part of a #

Writers of the Revolution, November 24thFeatured WRITER
~flawedfairytale
Featured by ~ozzla
~flawedfairytale is one of those deviants that are a treat to find. She caught my attention like that single card that falls out of a deck when your mind wanders while shuffling. All my focused efforts, or "shuffling" so to say, before that point to find an intriguing writer to feature had been a dismal failure. I can easily say that I am thankful for that because sometimes the unexpected is just what you are looking for. And boy was I not disappointed! Her pieces below stand out the most to me because of the verve in her words, making it obvious the passion behind her efforts to communicate the abstract that so easily elude the bounds of language.

The fifth season
"tear open the seal, rip open her soul- where
pages are left imprinted, just unread. breathe, and unravel
her lies
lies: her beautiful beautiful f

Belated Saturday Morning Features - 3better late than never, eh?
this is a weekly feature in which i select ten phenomenal literature deviations that have recently caught my eye. if you have been featured, please

this journal and read the other works. now, onto the main event—

"i was called to a bridge by a burning frost
fervent as it was obscene,
like a broadsword enthralled
in the chest of a working class Paul"

"violated:"

"smelling burning cane syrup
at rumdrunk full moon twilight"

"If you are even there
in the stretch of oceans, across icy miles
of bleak black. Do you exist? Are you there?
Green beacon means yes."

"that my mother left the hospital
with a cheque in hand to make up for
"the accident," of course."

"you write songs in the back of your mind
or something of that ilk
because triads well from the tips of your fingers
and i thought i was the dreamer—"

"Against the mindlessness
of

A Winter Only World Contest Winners!!!Welcome to the first ever #PoeticalCondition Contest winners blog!!!
I hope you are excited. We sure are!
Drumroll please!
First place:

by ~penlender
Second place:

by ~LightOverpowers58
Third place:

by =Sammur-amat
Prizes listed below.
Please allow a week or two for delivery of all prizes.
If you have not received something by then, please contact the person who is supposed to be giving it to you, or me (*RiseandBe). NOT the group.
Prizes:
First Place:
- Feature in the Group Journal
- Features in *RiseandBe's, ~NotenSMSK's, *prettyflour's and *DearPoetry's personal Journals
- Llamas from ~AnotherPassenger, *DearPoetry, ~NotenSMSK, =Starija and *RiseandBe
- 30

from ~NotenSMSK
- 200

from *RiseandBe
- Submission placed in the groups "Featured" folder
- One critique each from ~NotenSMSK, ~shehrozeameen and *prettyflour, on poems of your

100 Poem Project Update!
Current progress: 61/100
journal: [link]
blog: [link]
Also note that the terribly sweet ~SayaStarshine took a look at my list and decided she wanted to do it, too! She is using the same topics as me, and you can find the link to her stuff here.

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Mood: Joy
Listening to: Inner Universe, Origa
Watching: Stargate SG-1
Eating: Choco chip cookies!

Skin by =JeffrettaLyn

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